


Commotio Cerebri

by Chokopoppo



Series: Lost In Translation [1]
Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Concussions, Drunken Confessions, M/M, more like concussed confessions but it's basically the same thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 13:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7759390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chokopoppo/pseuds/Chokopoppo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robert Townsend isn't particularly adept at identifying romance, but he knows a concussion when he sees one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Commotio Cerebri

**Author's Note:**

> You know, I didn't really ship this. And then I found out that there are no fics of it, at all, anywhere. There's nothing. There's no community. It's not a ship, it's an abandoned kayak that someone carved out to use but like, didn't work that hard on? And then they left it to rot in the mud for some other person to deal with. Well, that person is me. This is my kayak, and I'm in this to win this. I haven't written anything in months, and it's _Towndre_ that's pulling me out. We did it, you guys. We forged this whole river.
> 
> I'm [Chokopoppo](http://www.chokopoppo.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you want to come yell at me.

Andre arrives after closing time, his signature apologetic smile draped over his face. Most of the right side of his face is blotted in shades of purple and red, and Robert feels his jaw loosen at the sight. Besides that, the shock is only allowed through the minute raise of his eyebrows - his lips are, as always, pressed tight and shut.

“Please forgive my intrusion, Mr. Townsend,” Andre says, and Robert’s fingers twist helplessly around the dishrag in his hands, “my intentions…I have never meant to impose upon your…I am afraid I don’t know, erm - “ he pauses, gives that polite, embarrassed little laugh now so familiar to his person, “ - what time it is. Ah, other than nighttime. Of course, I can see that from the sky…I…” he laughs again.

“Perhaps you should sit down, Major,” Robert says. The glass and rag, once in his hands, have found their home back on the bar, abandoned as he circumnavigates the room to arrive quickly at Andre’s side. He grips the major’s arm gently but firmly, one hand near his shoulder and the other cupping his elbow, and guides him forward into a chair. The action is met with little resistance - Andre seems dizzy, confused. If Robert wasn’t so closely acquainted with the black moods that alcohol so often visits upon his friend, he might think Andre was drunk. As it is, he fears whatever strike left his skin darkened has also rattled his brain in his skull. With careful fingers, he brushes long hair away from his face to better look at the injury, bites his lower lip despite himself. It’s bad. “What happened?”

Andre’s face tips easily in Robert’s searching fingers as he gently cups his jaw and turns his head for a better inspection. “I was…attacked, I think,” he says, voice distant as though directed at someone beyond Robert’s shoulder, “I was walking home from - from a dinner, or - no - “ his voice breaks off and he laughs again, his eyes shifting suddenly to meet Robert’s gaze, “ - I don’t think I remember at all.”

His eyes, normally so intense, so _blue_ , look terribly lost and searching, and Robert feels something unfamiliar in his lower stomach that he can’t identify but dislikes intensely. “Stay here,” he says, straightens and makes to return to the bar when Andre catches him by the wrist, makes him glance back.

“Stay here,” he parrots back, places his hands over the cuff of Robert’s shirtsleeve.

To his credit, Robert only pauses for two seconds. “You need ice,” he says firmly, and as Andre’s hands slacken in some sort of disappointment, pulls free of his grip and returns to the bar, mind shivering in a flurry of activity as he retrieves and unwraps the ice block. Definitely a bad head injury of some kind if Andre can’t remember his occupation from earlier that night - a mild to severe commotion, most likely - but the kind of injury Robert remembers how to treat. He is - he _was_ \- the third of eight children, a gaggle of reckless sisters prone to adventures and the accidents that always trail in recklessness’ wake. Such things are far from unknown to him.

He chips a sizable chunk off the side of the block, wraps it in a soft, clean cloth, and returns to Andre’s side, pulls a chair up to sit level with him. His eyes are odd, glassy, but they swivel and focus back on Robert’s face in a surreal sense of awe. “You came back.”

Robert doesn’t acknowledge this comment. “I brought ice,” he says instead, brushes the fallen hair back again and carefully presses the cloth against Andre’s cheekbone, bites down his own apologetic flinch as Andre hisses in surprise. “Sorry. Are you…?”

To Robert’s immense relief, Andre laughs, places his own hand (warm, soft) over Robert’s (cold, dry-cracking). “Of course, I’m fine. Thank you, Mr. Townsend. You are very kind to take care of me like this.” His eyes fall shut, and Robert finds himself watching that face intently. His hair has come out of its braid, cascading gently around his ears - his jaw is loose, his brow marred by the ghosts of daytime creases. The circles under his eyes seem so pronounced in this light. With a twinge of guilt, Robert wonders how he never noticed them before.

Major Andre is a tired man, and it is late at night, and Robert can feel him leaning into the hand of ice on his face - tentatively, at first, and then with the heavy sag of a weary traveler trying to find rest wherever it can be taken. Thoughtlessly, Robert touches the other side of his face, meets with no resistance. Strokes his fingers through the loosened hair framing Andre’s face, tucking it behind his ear. Without the bustle and sun from the day, the coffeehouse is nearly silent. Every easy, soft breath that wheezes through his companion is etched into the quiet. He finds himself staring, and cannot comfortably explain why.

“Perhaps I should take you home, Major,” he says after a moment, and Andre’s eyes drift open to meet his. “Can you hold this ice yourself while I get my coat?” Andre nods, and Robert releases his face, stands quickly, and moves several paces away, ostensibly to put his coat on, but primarily to recollect himself. Yes, alright, the major is handsome, and vulnerable, and apparently he trusts Robert enough to come to the coffeehouse before anywhere else, but he’s still _Major John Andre,_ the head of foreign intelligence, the epitome of the enemy. Robert should be _using_ that trust, that vulnerability - to ask questions of a now thoroughly unguarded mind, or to get into his house, or to keep him here and squeeze him for details, not taking care of an injury and _stroking his hair._ He wraps his scarf around him with an aggressive intensity he didn’t realize he had, jams his tricorn onto his head a little harder than necessary. If it’s been so long since someone let him touch them, maybe he really _should_ blow an evening at Margaret Clap’s, just to kill this little parasitic train of thought where it lies.

When he turns around, the major is watching him. Logically, he knows Andre can’t read his mind, but he still finds himself feeling embarrassed, caught-out by his thoughts. He almost wants to apologize - instead, he finds himself frozen in place by a pensive stare he can’t quite translate and isn’t sure he likes. Silence yawns between them.

“Well then, Mr. Townsend,” Andre says after a moment and rises to his feet, looking quite noble despite the small, wet cloth he holds over his eye, “perhaps you would be so kind as to accompany me home now. The evening will only grow older.”

“Of course,” Robert says, and guides his companion out the door into the night.

It’s a relatively quiet, uneventful walk. At some point, Andre held his elbow out expectantly, and without really thinking about it, Robert took it in hand, but other than that and occasional chatter along the lines of “expect we’ll get some rain soon,” nothing really happens. Which is fortunate, as it gives Robert some time to clear his head and avoid the concussed gazes his companion keeps throwing his way. This is, after all, just the product of a brain commotion, he reminds himself, relaxing. Of course Andre is behaving oddly. He’s been hit in the head. And it’s an hour past the time Robert normally tries to be in bed, so he’s tired and a little confused, which is the only reason he was behaving so oddly not twenty minutes ago. Exhaustion is a hell of a drug, he thinks placidly.

“Mr. Townsend,” Andre says suddenly as they near the house, stops in his tracks, “I just wanted to say…again…how entirely different you are from anyone I have ever met, and how grateful I am for that.”

Robert’s mouth is working around a response, a denial of flattery, but there’s something in Andre’s eyes that gives him pause. The glassy look is gone - it’s been replaced by something soft, focused. An evening gaze. He blinks, tightens his lips, searches Andre’s face for intention. “Major?” He asks, but it’s not a question.

“You are an honest, intelligent, trustworthy man, Mr. Townsend,” he continues, staring intently, “I fled from Philadelphia and expected to hate New York. And I _do_ hate this city - I hate the officers here, the military, the smell of the docks and the prisons, the atmosphere of smarmy contentment that so permeates my entire profession and which I fear will one day permeate myself. In short, I find I hate everything about this place except for _you,_ Mr. Townsend. If I had not found your friendship I cannot begin to comprehend what might have happened to me. The one kind man - “ and here his hand reaches up to touch Robert’s cheek, almost reverently, like a genuflection, “ - in all of New York.” And before Robert can collect his thoughts, find any sort of response at all, Andre leans in and kisses his cheek, his lips warm and dry on his skin.

Maybe there are so many thoughts that they cancel each other out, because Robert tries to formulate thoughts and finds only white noise, crackling and buzzing like the remnants of lightning in a jar. So when he tries to speak, the only thing that comes out of his mouth is “you are very concussed.” Later, he will curse himself for this response, for its simplicity and maybe its inherent condescension, but right now there is nothing else in his mind at all.

Andre looks like he might be considering being upset, or maybe even hurt, but Robert takes his hand and gives him a rare smile. “I say this for your sake,” he says, “if you’re going to kiss someone, you ought to be sober enough that you won’t regret it tomorrow. If I learned nothing else from bar tending, I learned that.” Andre seems to consider this, then smiles vaguely, and lets himself be guided up into the welcoming arms of his home.

Abigail answers the door, goes from surprise to worry as she sees the way Andre is being supported and the darkening bruises on his face, and takes his elbow when Robert releases him. “He’s been hit in the head - mild commotion, nothing too serious, just get him to bed and keep his head elevated,” he tells her, and she nods with the exhausted conviction of a mother. She, like him, has dealt with such things before.

As Robert thanks her and turns to go, Andre looks over his shoulder at his retreating back. “Mr. Townsend,” he says, experimentally, “I am reluctant to see you go so soon - will you stay?” His eyes are imploring, dark. Robert does not meet them.

“I’m afraid I have already been away too long,” he replies instead, “let your servant take care of you. I will await your return when you are fully recovered, but not before. Goodnight, major.”

An odd night, he thinks, and walks home alone in the dark.

~~

And that _should_ have been the end of it, except that it preys on Robert’s mind all the way back to _Rivington’s._ His palms sweat in his pockets, no matter how he clenches them into fists, and it takes more effort than he’d like to admit to keep his fingers from gently touching the place on his cheek where that kiss fell. _’He was concussed,’_ Robert reminds himself sternly, _’lots of people do stupid things that they don't mean when they’re concussed.’_ A worthless evening. Completely pointless.

Except it isn’t, because - as Robert discovers when he finally unlocks the door and returns to the coffee house on the corner - Andre’s left his sketchbook. The one he always carries with him. The one he writes in, clutches to his chest like a mother with her babe.

And _that’s_ useful.


End file.
